San Quentin Film Festival (SQFF) to Hold Event at Central California Women’s Facility
The San Quentin Film Festival (SQFF) announced that its first event held outside the walls of San Quentin Rehabilitation Center will take place March 28 at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla.
The program will feature screenings of the award-winning short films from the 2025 San Quentin Film Festival, So Boom, directed by Abby Pierce, and Oscar’s Return, directed by Steven Raven Liang, followed by a filmmaker panel, moderated by comedian and TV broadcaster W. Kamau Bell (CNN’s Emmy-nominated United Shades of America).
SQFF PRESENTS @ CCWF is produced in partnership with the nonprofit Pollen Initiative, which established and supports the CCWF Media Center, and the award-winning prison newspaper CCWF Paper Trail, now celebrating its first anniversary. The event is led by SQFF and Pollen in collaboration with the CCWF incarcerated leadership team and staff of Paper Trail.
The festival will also feature a Women in Film Panel with a diverse group of women filmmakers offering residents insight into the production experience and direct engagement with working industry professionals. Director Dee Rees (Mudbound, Pariah) will join jurors Christina Oh, Tracie Layman, Christine Swanson and Amy Vincent.
The day-long program will conclude with an Awards Ceremony announcing the winners of the Screenplay and Documentary Pitch Competition, open exclusively to residents of CCWF and the California Institution for Women (CIW), the state’s two women’s prisons. Finalists and winners will be selected by the CCWF Industry Jury, which includes:
• Lin Que Ayoung (screenwriter; Ricky, Cracked)
• Maria Alexandria Beech (playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and TV producer; Legal Queens, What Are You Doing Here)
• Maya Cameron-Gordon (director and author; What’chu Mixed With?, The Mermaid Princesses)
• Frank Harts (actor, director and writer; Billions, The Beast in Me)
• Kia Corthron (playwright, screenwriter and novelist; The Wire, The Castle Cross The Magnet Carter)
• Tracie Layman (screenwriter and director; Bob Trevino Likes It, Tony the Tattooed Man)
• Leland Orser (actor, screenwriter and director; Taken, Berlin Station)
• Michele Scott (author, essayist, and prison reform advocate; Why I Fight to End Life Without Parole), who served 30 years at CCWF before her sentence was commuted
• Christine Swanson (writer and director, Chicago PD, Power)
• Amy Vincent (cinematographer; Song Sung Blue, Hustle and Flow)
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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